Why we all should love RSS. It makes the web higher level without taking anything away. #
Try as hard as I can I still have distinct flows and more than one place where I edit. I think that's a consequence of working on WordLand. I have to use it for serious writing, or it doesn't work. Maybe I can find a way to merge flows, but not at the moment. I still have to do some copy/pasting. #
Fascinating blog post from Jason Shellen, tech entrepreneur, formerly with Blogger and Google. Here’s my perspective on part of the story he tells about RSS and Google Reader.#
Netscape gave us RSS 0.91 and it was good enough to create a new powerful layer on the web. Then Netscape blew up and a bunch of repeated efforts to kill it from big companies. I’ll leave it to others to say why, but they tried over and over to extinguish the spark. Independent developers were stubborn, we kept using the original format, and in the end the independents prevailed. #
Don’t ever think bigco’s are the answer. They tend to suck the life out of open systems. If you have something good going, work together. It’s the antidote to bigco dominance. #
If you suck up to the bigco thinking they’ll let you in, maybe they will for a short while. But what you’ll be left with may not be worth the cost. And just because you have a job at a bigco doesn’t make you hot shit. Maybe for a moment. #
This theory has a name, it’s described in the Prisoner’s Dilemma, and its lesson applies in tech and in the political disaster the US has become.#
Last update: Tuesday October 7, 2025; 12:56 PM EDT.
You know those obnoxious sites that pop up dialogs when they think you're about to leave, asking you to subscribe to their email newsletter? Well that won't do for Scripting News readers who are a discerning lot, very loyal, but that wouldn't last long if I did rude stuff like that. So here I am at the bottom of the page quietly encouraging you to sign up for the nightly email. It's got everything from the previous day on Scripting, plus the contents of the linkblog and who knows what else we'll get in there. People really love it. I wish I had done it sooner. And every email has an unsub link so if you want to get out, you can, easily -- no questions asked, and no follow-ups. Go ahead and do it, you won't be sorry! :-)